Babi Yar
Babi Yar ( ; , Babyn Yar) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor, Major-General Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-''Obergruppenführer'' Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a soldiers, along with the aid of the SD and SS Police Battalions backed by the local police. The massacre was the largest single mass killing for which the Nazi regime and its collaborators were responsible during its campaign against the Soviet Union and is considered to be "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust" to that particular date,Wendy Morgan Lower, From Berlin to Babi Yar. The Nazi War Against the Jews, 1941–1944 Journal of Religion & Society, Volume 9 (2007). The Kripke Center, Towson University. I.S.S.N 1522–5658. Retrieved from Internet Archive, May 24, 2013. surpassed only by the Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 with 42,000–43,000 victims, and the 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941, committed by the Romanian troops. | last=Browning | first=Christopher R. | author-link=Christopher Browning | pages=135–142 | format=PDF file, direct download 7.91 MB complete | quote=''Also:'' PDF cache archived by WebCite.}} Victims of other massacres at the site included thousands of Soviet POWs, communists, Gypsies (Romani people), Ukrainian nationalists and civilian hostages.A Museum for Babi Yar, The Jerusalem Post (23 October 2011) It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 lives were taken at Babi Yar during the German occupation. Historical background The Babi Yar (Babyn Yar) ravine was first mentioned in historical accounts in 1401, in connection with its sale by "baba" (an old woman), the cantiniere, to the Dominican Monastery.Anatoliy Kudrytsky, editor-in-chiev, "Vulytsi Kyeva" (The Streets of Kiev), Ukrainska Entsyklopediya , ISBN 5-88500-070-0 In the course of several centuries the site had been used for various purposes including military camps and at least two cemeteries, among them an Orthodox Christian cemetery and a Jewish cemetery. The latter was officially closed in 1937. Massacres of 29–30 September 1941 at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, March 1948 (beard grown in prison)]] Axis forces, mainly German, occupied Kiev on 19 September 1941. On September 26 Maj. Gen. Kurt Eberhard, the military governor, and SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS and Police Leader at Rear Headquarters Army Group South, made the decision to exterminate the Jews of Kiev, claiming that it was in retaliation for guerrilla attacks against German troops. Einsatzgruppe C carried out the Babi Yar massacre and a number of other mass atrocities in Ukraine during the summer and autumn of 1941. Its commander SS-Brigadefuhrer Dr. Otto Rasch and the officer commanding Sonderkommando 4a, SS-Standartenfuhrer Paul Blobel were at the September 26 meeting as well. An order was then posted in the town: of the city of Kiev and its vicinity must appear on Monday, September 29, by 08:00 a.m. at the corner of Mel'nikova and Doktorivska streets (near cemetery). Must take with them documents, money and valuables, also warm clothing, linen etc.'' Those of Yids who won't follow this order and will be found in other place, will be shot. Those of civilians who enter the dwellings left by Yids and plunder stuff, will be shot.|Order posted in Kiev in Russian, on or around September 26, 1941.Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this edition 2006, pp. 97–98.}} On 29 and 30 September 1941, a special team of German SS troops supported by other German units and local collaborators murdered 33,771 Jewish civilians after taking them to the ravine.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Kiev and Babi Yar," Holocaust Encyclopedia.A Community of Violence: The SiPo/SD and Its Role in the Nazi Terror System in Generalbezirk Kiew by Alexander V. Prusin. Holocaust Genocide Studies, Spring 2007; 21: 1 – 30.Staff. The Holocaust Chronicle: Massacre at Babi Yar, The Holocaust Chronicle web site, Access 17 December 2007 The implementation of the order was entrusted to Sonderkommando 4a, commanded by Blobel, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln.1941: Mass Murder The Holocaust Chronicle. p. 270 This unit consisted of SD and Sipo, the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon of the 9th Police Battalion. Police Battalion 45, commanded by Major Besser, conducted the massacre, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion. The commander of the Einsatzkommando reported two days later:Martin Gilbert (1985): The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 0-03-062416-9: 202. According to the testimony of a truck driver named Hofer, victims were ordered to undress and were beaten if they resisted: led them past a number of different places where one after the other they had to give up their luggage, then their coats, shoes and over-garments and also underwear. They also had to leave their valuables in a designated place. There was a special pile for each article of clothing. It all happened very quickly and anyone who hesitated was kicked or pushed by the Ukrainians sic to keep them moving.|Michael Berenbaum: "Statement of Truck-Driver Hofer describing the murder of Jews at Babi Yar""Statement of Truck-Driver Hofer describing the murder of Jews at Babi Yar" cited in Berenbaum, Michael: Witness to the Holocaust. New York: HarperCollins. 1997. pp. 138–139. Retrieved from Internet Archive, April 26, 2013.}} The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children could not have known what was happening until it was too late; by the time they heard the machine gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. A truck driver described the scene. , Execution: Babi Yar, ca. 1944–1952]] on the witness stand, January 24, 1946, at a Kiev war-crimes trial of fifteen members of the German police responsible for the occupied Kiev region.]] In the evening, the Germans undermined the wall of the ravine and buried the people under the thick layers of earth. According to the Einsatzgruppe's Operational Situation Report, 33,771 Jews from Kiev and its suburbs were systematically shot dead by machine-gun fire at Babi Yar on September 29 and September 30, 1941.Operational Situation Report No. 101 (einsatzgruppenarchives.com) The money, valuables, underwear, and clothing of the murdered victims were turned over to the local ethnic Germans and to the Nazi administration of the city.Nuremberg Military Tribunal, Einsatzgruppen trial, Judgment, at page 430. Survivors One of the most often-cited parts of Anatoly Kuznetsov's documentary novel ''Babi Yar'' is the testimony of Dina Pronicheva, an actress of the Kiev Puppet Theatre, and a survivor. She was one of those ordered to march to the ravine, to be forced to undress and then be shot. Jumping before being shot and falling on other bodies, she played dead in a pile of corpses. She held perfectly still while the Nazis continued to shoot the wounded or gasping victims. Although the SS had covered the mass grave with earth, she eventually managed to climb through the soil and escape. Since it was dark, she had to avoid the flashlights of the Nazis finishing off the remaining victims still alive, wounded and gasping in the grave. She was one of the very few survivors of the massacre and later related her horrifying story to Kuznetsov."A Survivor of the Babi Yar Massacre," Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (PBS). Gilbert (1985): 204–205. At least 29 survivors are known.https://archive.is/20120803075139/www.izvestia.ru/hystory/article3096753/ In 2006, Yad Vashem and other Jewish organizations started a project to identify and name the Babi Yar victims, but so far only 10% have been identified. Yad Vashem has recorded the names of around 3,000 Jews killed at Babi Yar, as well as those of some 7,000 Jews from Kiev who were killed during the Holocaust. Further executions In the months that followed, thousands more were seized and taken to Babi Yar where they were shot. It is estimated that more than 100,000 residents of Kiev of all ethnic groups, Юрій Шаповал (February 27, 2009), «Бабин Яр»: доля тексту та автора. Літакцент, 2007-2009.Yury Shapoval, "The Defection of Anatoly Kuznetsov", День, January 18, 2005. mostly civilians, were murdered by the Nazis there during World War II.Shmuel Spector, "Babi Yar," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Israel Gutman, editor in chief, Yad Vashem, Sifriat Hapoalim, New York: Macmillan, 1990. 4 volumes. ISBN 0-02-896090-4. An excerpt of the article is available at Ada Holtzman, "Babi Yar: Killing Ravine of Kiev Jewry – WWII", We Remember! Shalom!. A concentration camp was also built in the area. Mass executions at Babi Yar continued up until the German forces departed from Kiev. On January 10, 1942 about 100 sailors from a military flotilla were executed there. In addition, Babi Yar became a place of execution of residents of five Gypsy camps. According to various estimates, during 1941–1943 between 70,000–200,000 Romani people were rounded up and murdered at Babi Yar. Patients of the Ivan Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital were gassed and then dumped into the ravine. Thousands of other Ukrainians were killed at Babi Yar.Babi Yar (Page 2) by Jennifer Rosenberg (about.com) Among those murdered were 621 members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Ukrainian poet and activist Olena Teliha and her husband, renowned bandurist Mykhailo Teliha, were murdered there on February 21, 1942.Ludmyla Yurchenko, "Life is not to be sold for a few pieces of silver: The life of Olena Teliha", Ukrainian Youth Association. Upon the Soviet liberation of Kiev in 1943, Russian officials led Western journalists to the site of the massacres and allowed them to interview survivors. Among them were Bill Lawrence of The New York Times and Bill Downs of CBS. Downs described in a report to Newsweek what he had been told by one of the survivors, Efim Vilkis: }} Numbers murdered Estimates of the total number killed at Babi Yar during the Nazi occupation vary. In 1946, Soviet prosecutor L. N. Smirnov at the Nuremberg Trials claimed there were approximately 100,000 corpses lying in Babi Yar, using materials of the Extraordinary State Commission set out by the Soviets to investigate Nazi crimes after the liberation of Kiev in 1943.Materials of the Nuremberg Trial in Russian: Iosif Kremenetsky, "Babi Yar – September 1941" Из Сообщения Чрезвычайной Государственной Комиссии о Разрушениях и зверствах, Совершенных Немецко – Фашистскими Захватчиками в Городе Киеве. Нюрнбергский Процесс. Документ СССР-9. According to testimonies of workers forced to burn the bodies, the numbers range from 70,000 to 120,000. In a recently published letter to Israeli journalist, writer, and translator Shlomo Even-Shoshan dated May 17, 1965, Anatoly Kuznetsov commented on the Babi Yar atrocity: , January 18, 2005.}} For his war crimes Paul Blobel was sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen Trial. He was hanged in June 1951 at the Landsberg Prison. Syrets concentration camp . Barbwire fence]] In the course of the German occupation, the Syrets concentration camp was set up in Babi Yar. Interned communists, Soviet POWs, and captured Soviet partisans were murdered there among others. On February 18, 1943, three Dynamo Kyiv football players (Trusevich, Klimenko, and Putistin) who took part in the Match of Death with the German Luftwaffe team were also murdered in the camp. Concealment of the crimes Before the Nazis retreated from Kiev ahead of the Soviet offensive of 1944, they were ordered by Koppe to conceal their atrocities in the East. Paul Blobel, who was in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the Sonderaktion 1005 in eliminating its traces. The Aktion was carried out earlier in all death camps. The bodies were exhumed, burned and the ashes scattered over farmland in the vicinity.Aktion 1005. Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2013-04-25.Aktion 1005. Yad Vashem. Shoa Resource Centre. Retrieved 2013-04-25. Remembrance After the war, specifically Jewish commemoration efforts encountered serious difficulty because of the Soviet Union's policies.Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt, Penguin Books, Reprint edition (September 5, 2006),ISBN 0143037757 (page 182) After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of memorials have been erected on the site and elsewhere. The events also formed a part of literature. Babi Yar is located in Kiev at the juncture of today's Kurenivka, Lukianivka and Syrets neighborhoods, between Frunze, Melnykov and Olena Teliha streets and St. Cyril's Monastery. After the Orange Revolution, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine hosted a major commemoration of the 65th anniversary in 2006, attended by Presidents Moshe Katsav of Israel, Filip Vujanovic of Montenegro, Stjepan Mesić of Croatia, and Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. Rabbi Lau pointed out that if the world had reacted to the massacre of Babi Yar, perhaps the Holocaust might never have happened. Implying that Hitler was emboldened by this impunity, Lau speculated: }} In 2006, a message was also delivered on behalf of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, by his representative, Francis Martin O'Donnell, who added a Hebrew prayer Shalom, from the Mourners' Kaddish. In fiction *Parts of George H. W. Bush's speech in Babi Yar in 1991 are quoted in Aleksandar Hemon's novel Nowhere Man. *The Babi Yar executions are described in detail in Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes (in English, The Kindly Ones), whose main character, Dr. Aue, is one of the Nazi officers in charge. *''The Remnant – Jewish Resistance in WWII'' by Othniel J. Seiden (c 2010, ISBN 0-9801941-4-8; Books to Believe In) also tells of the horrors of Babi Yar, along with the stories of the Forest People of the Ukraine, who made up much of the Jewish Resistance to the Nazis. *''The Survivor of Babi Yar'' by Othniel J. Seiden (c 1980, ISBN 937050-02-4) is an account of the title character as he escapes and forms a Jewish resistance group of some size and significance. *In Chapter 5 of his novel The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas vividly describes the whole episode and the execution of his main character, Lisa, at Babi Yar. He describes Dina Pronicheva as "the only witness, the sole authority for what Lisa saw and felt". Lisa's death is ambiguously recounted, and in Chapter 6, Lisa arrives at what seems to be a reception camp in Palestine, but which is in fact a post-death extension of her psychological dream life. *''Holocaust'' - 1978 U.S. TV miniseries, depicted the massacre at Babi Yar. * The novel HHhH ''by Laurent Binet (N. American publication in 2012, ISBN 978-0-374-16991-6) won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Romanin 2010. Binet outlines the events at Babi Yar on September 29–30, 1941 in Chapter 111. Mudslide Babi Yar was also the site of a large mudslide in the spring of 1961. An earthen dam in the ravine had held loam pulp that had been pumped from the local brick factories for ten years without sufficient drainage. The dam collapsed after heavy rain, inundating the lower-lying Kurenivka neighborhood. The death toll was estimated to be between 500 and 2,000 people. See also *1961 Kurenivka mudslide in Kiev (a disaster that killed hundreds of local residents and workers) *Babi Yar Symphony by Shostakovich *Consequences of Nazism *Genocides in history *History of the Jews in Ukraine *List of massacres in Ukraine *Mass graves in the Soviet Union *Operation Barbarossa *Reichskommissariat Ukraine *The Holocaust *Ukrainian collaborationism with the Axis powers Notes References Sources *A. Anatoli (Anatoly Kuznetsov), trans. David Floyd, (1970), ''Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-671-45135-9 *"Babi Yar in the mirror of science, or the map of Bermuda Triangle", an article in Zerkalo Nedeli (the Mirror Weekly), July 2005, available online in Russian and in Ukrainian * Encyclopedia of Kiev External links *The Invasion of the Soviet Union and the Beginnings of Mass Murder on the Yad Vashem website *Marking 70 Years to Operation Barbarossa on the Yad Vashem website * Babi Yar: Mass Murder (history1900s.about.com) * In-depth study on Babi Yar * The Massacre at Babi Yar Near Kiev (historyplace.com) * Babi Yar (Jewish Virtual Library) * Babi Yar: Killing Ravine of Kiev Jewry – WWII (zchor.org) * Babi Yar (berdichev.org) * History. Geography. Memory by Tatyana Yevstafyeva. August 15, 2002 (a reprint from newspaper "Jewish Observer") Category:Mass murder in 1941 Category:1941 in the Soviet Union Category:Einsatzgruppen Category:History of Kiev Category:Jewish Ukrainian history Category:Massacres in Ukraine Category:Mass graves Category:Eastern Front (World War II) Category:Holocaust antisemitic attacks and incidents Category:World War II massacres Category:The Holocaust in Ukraine Category:World War II sites in Ukraine Category:World War II sites of Nazi Germany Category:Nazi war crimes Category:Massacres in the Soviet Union